Ertingen, 27 July, 2012 Last Friday, Lock Antriebstechnik GmbH celebrated its annual Summer Festival. The high point this year was the opening ceremony for the new production building. Here, this SME will be manufacturing drives of the kind used on ventilation elements in glass and steel structures and in industrial greenhouses.
The move into this new building has been being staged progessively since the midpoint of last year, meaning that production has already been taking place here for some months. This year's Summer Festival provided a suitable framework for staging an official opening ceremony for this production building, measuring some 2,400 square metres. "These new spaces now enable us to manufacture drive units to the very latest methodology relating to workplace organization", explains CEO Frank Lock. "Shorter distances between the individual stages of the manufacturing process make production more efficient and more 'lean'. This also means that we can create ultra-modern workplace conditions for our employees." This new building, custom-built to suit new sequences of production operation, was constructed by Reisch, a company based in Bad Saulgau, and its CEO, Hansjörg Reisch, also attended the celebration. In his address, the deputy mayor of Ertingen, Karlheinz Fensterle, praised the great commitment of his local SME and its 75-strong workforce: "Modern workplaces enhance the attractiveness of our community." This new build and connecting road link cost somewhere to the order of three million euro, partially funded by a federal programme of the state of Baden-Württemberg for development in rural areas. Mr. Fees from the government president's office in Tübingen was eloquent in his praise of this new construction and of the innovative production concept employed by Lock.
There were other highlights at this Summer Festival: as well as good food and music, guided tours of the plant were on offer. This gave employees and their families an opportunity to get to know the company premises, both young and old, and to gain insights into the production processes. 'Hands-on' involvement was required in an art project a 'Paintathlon' to design the leisure and recreation room in the new building: Lock employees were able to give their creativity a free hand and to help shape the ambience of the space in which they would, in future, be spending their work-time break periods. Frank Lock is pleased with the outcome: "Employees here should feel good about themselves. Part of that involves having a human touch in the workplace. That is one of the great strengths here at Lock."
New production building officially inaugurated
